Purple Electric

@purpleelectric

Historic Lib Dem voter who is apparently now hard left without changing my views (I now vote Green). Cat lover. Passionate about justice and the rule of law.

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Purple Electric@purpleelectric· 29d

A sea lion gazes intently at the camera.

Purple Electric@purpleelectric· Jun 25

You know, when I see pictures of Liv, I can't help but think of Sarah Alexander.

Purple Electric@purpleelectric· Jun 22

Here's an off the wall thought. Today's politics are about the rich and powerful seeking policies that push the general public down Maslow's hierarchy of needs so that they are too worried about their basic needs to worry about things like accountability for the wrongdoing of the wealthy.

Maslow's hierarchy of needs
Self-actualization:
achieving one’s
full potential,
including creative
activities
Esteem needs:
prestige and feeling of accomplishment
Belongingness and love needs:
intimate relationships, friends
Safety needs:
securily, safety
Physiological needs:
food, water, warmth, rest

Purple Electric@purpleelectric· Jun 19

Actual result. Why does anyone take any notice of opinion polls for by-elections? And why do polls keep overestimating Reform?

Lab 54.8%
Ref 34.5%
Res 6.8%
Con 2.2%
Green 0.7%
LD 0.4%

Purple Electric@purpleelectric· Jun 16

Simply not true. This very wise black woman saw better.

Purple Electric@purpleelectric· Jun 11

He already has dropped his WASPI idea. From the Graun:

Andy Burnham’s campaign has released a statement saying that when he spoke about “some recompense” for the Waspi women (see 11.50am), he was not talking about financial compensation. As the Times reports, a Burnham spokesperson issued a statement this morning saying:

Andy has always recognised the unfair way in which state pension equalisation was introduced.

As mayor of Greater Manchester, he supported Waspi women in the city-region with early access to concessionary travel, providing some recompense to them within affordability limits.

He accepts the final decision has been made in relation to financial compensation but has indicated an openness to considering similar schemes on the Greater Manchester model.

Purple Electric@purpleelectric· Jun 6

A woman comforting a sad-looking man with the words, "Do you think it might help to learn the difference between "being silenced" and just, like, a bunch of people not wanting to hear you talk any more?"

Purple Electric@purpleelectric· Jun 3

I rather agree.

Two almost identical tabby cats sitting on a duvet and gazing up at the camera. Roxy on the left, her sister Foxie on the right.

Purple Electric@purpleelectric· May 27

David Bradley as Argus Filch from Harry Potter.

Purple Electric@purpleelectric· May 5

If Starmer "dealt with it properly" in the Labour Party, why didn't he expel Steve Reed?

News item by Matt Honeycombe-Foster from 6th July 2020 highlighting Steve Reed apologising unreservedly for a tweet describing a Jewish donor to the Tories as a "puppet master", a well-known anti-Semitic trope.

Purple Electric@purpleelectric· May 5

He’s also a raging racist who had to apologise for his anti-Semitism.

Labour frontbencher apologises unreservedly for “puppet master” tweet about Jewish Tory donor. Story by Matt Honeycombe-Foster, 2020.

Purple Electric@purpleelectric· May 2

You really can't be serious.

Side by side, a picture of Zack Polanski, and the anti-Semitic caricature of him with a hooked nose and large ears that he does not possess.

Purple Electric@purpleelectric· May 2

The nose in that image doesn’t look remotely like Zack’s nose.

Purple Electric@purpleelectric· Apr 28

Oh God, they're going to argue they have been insufficiently fashy again, aren't they? www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

Welsh Labour, met with lacklustre receptions on the doorstep and with a very different future for Wales coming into view, is bracing for what one senior source described as a “critical debate about what the party stands for” after the election.

“There will be those who try to defend 27 years in power, and attribute blame for a loss to the UK government or other factors,” they said. “But you have to be humble in losing. You have to understand why you lost the public’s trust and support and what needs to be done to stay relevant.”

Purple Electric@purpleelectric· Apr 25

I presume those TERFs are really upset by THIS, then. Can you point me to where they are campaigning about male guards in women's prisons? www.crimeandjustice.org.uk/creation-mix...

The 1823 Gaol Act stipulated that women’s prisons would house women and be entirely staffed by women (and likewise men’s prisons by men).

Fast forward two centuries and the presence of male prison staff in female prisons in the UK is now taken for granted. Yet, there has been no parliamentary discussion of the introduction of men into women’s prisons (males who identify as women excepted) and little to no questioning by penal reform lobbying and campaign groups.

What is more, there is no publicly-available information about the number of males in female prisons (or vice versa) or any studies ascertaining the impact of this on the regulation and governance of prisons as organisations.

Purple Electric@purpleelectric· Apr 20

Oh look. It's "stopped clock" day.

Badench claims Starmer did not ask questions about Mandelson because 'he didn't want to know'
Badenoch criticised Starmer for sacrificing his officials.

The prime minister has thrown his staff and his officials under the bus.

Yet this is a man who once said, “I will carry the can for the mistakes of any organisation I lead.”

Instead, he has sacked his cabinet secretary. He has sacked his director of communications, he has sacked his chief of staff and he has now sacked the permanent secretary of the Foreign Office.

All of these people fired for a decision he made.

Badenoch also criticised Starmer for not asking enough questions

[Starmer’s] defence is that he, a former director of public prosecutions, is so lacking in curiosity that he chose to ask no questions about the vetting process.

He asked no questions about Mandelson’s relationship with Epstein. He asked no questions about the security risk Mandelson posed. Apparently, he didn’t even speak to Peter Mandelson before his appointment. It doesn’t appear that he asked any questions at all. Why? Because he didn’t want to know.

Purple Electric@purpleelectric· Apr 19

The transphobe Dugdale feels scared as a lesbian, huh? Wonder why…

[A right winger speaks to a gay man holding a “Gays against drag queens” sign.]

- We finally did it. We outlawed all the trans people and drag queens. Thanks for your help.

- So who are we going after next?

[The right winger stares at him]

- I said who’s next?

[The gay man starts to look anxious as the penny drops]

- Who?

Purple Electric@purpleelectric· Apr 14

A stick figure sitting at a computer.

- Are you coming to bed?
- I can’t. This is important.
- What?
- Someone is WRONG on the Internet.

Purple Electric@purpleelectric· Apr 14

Even if the cake is a fixed size, you can still change how you cut it.

A Rupert Murdoch figure with a plate full of cookies speaks to a worker with a single cookie in front of him, saying "careful mate... that foreigner wants your cookie."

Purple Electric@purpleelectric· Apr 14

Can I have this again with subtitles please?

“It’s pretty insidious of John Swinney, who rightly call out the frankly racism of Reform and then try to pretend that the person they target with tens of thousands of pounds worth of ads is someone that’s going to do the secret deal with them,” he said.

Purple Electric@purpleelectric· Apr 6

I saved this chart from 8th March, so as to have a point of comparison between expectations and actual outcome. I share your view that it could be even worse than this.

Bar chart showing projected seat totals ahead of the London elections.

Green 548 (+530)
Conservative 481 (+77)
Labour 415 (-741)
Lib Dem 252 (+72)
Reform 132 (+132)

Purple Electric@purpleelectric· Apr 4

Let's be frank. We are both oversimplifying a complex issue here. For a more nuanced discussion of the relative merits of universality and means testing, this report from Loughborough University is very helpful. repository.lboro.ac.uk/articles/rep...

In these circumstances, it is no longer realistic to treat means-testing simply as a regrettable necessity at the margins of the welfare state, and to regard social transfers as principally aiming to create social solidarity through shared access to universal benefits and services. This is not to deny a continuing crucial role for universal approaches, especially to the provision of services. The essential role that state-funded provision plays in the lives of most British people should not be forgotten or undervalued.

Moreover, there are many specific cases where means-testing should be avoided if at all possible, particularly where disincentive, stigma, complexity and incomplete take-up are most severe. Rather, there needs to be open-mindedness to where these effects can be minimised and avoided, and where on the other hand they are the least tractable, so means-testing itself should be avoided if possible. At the same time, where the effects can be contained, the huge social advantage of focusing finite resources on the most needy should be acknowledged.

Purple Electric@purpleelectric· Mar 28

Remarkable when you get better political analysis in the Guardian from their freelance TV critic than from the political team.

One wonders if Westminster etiquette prevents Goodall from even considering the unpalatable alternative, which is that Starmer hasn’t improved people’s lives because he doesn’t want to, and the above gaffes show his instincts when in power are conservative. A wider interrogation of Starmer’s position on Gaza – which is only mentioned in passing as part of the reason for the loss in the Gorton and Denton byelection – and the authoritarian leanings of his response to protest, as well as a look at how Labour’s sources of funding have shifted from many small membership fees to relatively few corporate donations, might have created space for the idea that Starmer does have an ideology: to maintain the status quo, however angry this might make voters. It’s surely possible that the promise of change was a cynical lie, but this argument appears out of bounds.

Purple Electric@purpleelectric· Mar 24

The one in your photo looks very similar to mine.

Two almost identical tabby cats sitting on a windowsill.

Purple Electric@purpleelectric· Mar 22

You're being way too kind to him. He talked about shagging the kids, and "not much below year 10", ie not "much below" 14-15. Year 10 means spectator.com/article/a-te...

I never found out because the one thing stopping me from being a teacher was that I could not remotely conceive of not trying to shag the kids. It seemed to me virtually impossible not to, and I was convinced that I’d be right in there, on day one. We're talking secondary school level here, by the way - and even then I don't think I'd have dabbled much below year 10, as it is now called."

Purple Electric@purpleelectric· Mar 12

Oh please!

Pierce, 66, was a roaring success as our woman in Washington. She was a Foreign Office lifer who’d already done two tours in the US capital having already wowed everyone as the top British diplomat at the UN – including Donald Trump, who described her as “fab”. Long before Mandy fawned into the picture, Pierce was already well known in diplomatic circles as the woman with the rapport with Trump. The morning after Trump was elected, Pierce posted a picture of herself with the Donald in an orange dress (appropriately matching his fake tan) in the Oval Office.

Purple Electric@purpleelectric· Mar 8

Sir Brian came up with 180 recommendations in a 700 page report. Many of them are sensible. Wasting money on a restructure that could go into dealing with the decades of chronic underfunding, to save just 2-3% of Crown Court time, is not one of them. www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/publication/...

Judge-only trials will account for a very small proportion of demand

As discussed above, around a quarter of trials that reach the crown court will be dealt with by a judge sitting alone in the ‘bench division’. This is only likely to amount to a few thousand cases. If the MoJ’s estimate that these cases will be heard 20% quicker is correct, that would save less than 2% of total court time. Even if they have underestimated the impact and cases save 30% of court time across all hearings, that would reduce total demand by 2.5%. Given the uncertainty around whether this will be realised and the risks of having judges sitting alone to decide both verdict and sentence, this is a very marginal gain.

Purple Electric@purpleelectric· Mar 8

And their support for Sandie Peggie who is both aggressively transphobic and a virulent racist.

Proud to meet four heroes in Parliament today.

Sandie Peggie, the Darlington Nurses and Jennifer Melle.

They have shown tremendous courage and bravery in challenging a warped ideology and a culture of virtue signaIling that rewards institutional cowardice. Thankfully, the tide is...

[Image of Joani Reid MP, Sandie Peggie, Jennifer Melle with three other women and one man]

Purple Electric@purpleelectric· Mar 7

I'm late to this party, but here is another for your collection...

JK Rowling smoking a cigar in "celebration" of victimising trans people in the Supreme Court.

Purple Electric@purpleelectric· Mar 4

And sure enough, I have found the evidence to show that it is garbage. www.bestforbritain.org/1in4_worried...